


leave 'em on a high note

by Nanoochka



Series: the get-through [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Holoprojector sex, Long-Distance Friendship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Phone Calls & Telephones, Phone Sex, post-episode s02e5: the jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 10:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28349748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanoochka/pseuds/Nanoochka
Summary: How many of these holocalls had there been in the last several months? Dozens, surely. But never before had Din resented the distance between them so fiercely, all the galaxies and planets and stars that stood between him being able to pull Cobb’s hand away, to pull that droll gaze back to him with a finger beneath his chin.An endless universe that suddenly served no purpose beyond putting millions of miles between him and someone he might’ve—Someone he might’ve chosen. For himself, for once. Had things been different. But that was not the way.Didn’t mean he always had to like it.(In which Din leaves Cobb Vanth behind on Tatooine, but Cobb Vanth doesn't, as it turns out, leave him.)
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Series: the get-through [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108025
Comments: 42
Kudos: 416





	leave 'em on a high note

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for canon-typical descriptions of slavery, branding, and mentions of religious fundamentalism.
> 
> Thanks to [rcmclachlan](http://rcmclachlan.tumblr.com) for the cheerleading and beta. All further mistakes are my own.
> 
> Title from Fousheé.

“Do Mandalorians have ten fingers and toes?”

“Vanth.”

“How would I know? Not like anyone’s seen your feet. Do you have anything extra you’re hiding beneath your armor? Like a tail?”

“ _Vanth_.”

“I’ve told you before, it’s Cobb. And speaking of which. Do y’all have names? Actual ones?”

In the soft blue glow the holoprojector cast about the cockpit of the Razor Crest, Din gave a gentle snort. It was lost, likely, to the antique comms tech and the soft beeps of the navigational equipment, the incessant hum of the ship around them, but by the fond hitch of Cobb’s smirk and the way his eyes crinkled in amusement, Din’s exasperation translated just fine. Beneath his helmet, he bit back a smile of his own and tilted his head, meeting Cobb’s gaze through the barriers of visor and hologram. He took it on faith that translated too.

“Of course we have names,” he answered. His indolent sprawl in the captain’s chair matched his tone, matched the casual lean of his head against his fist, and it was almost possible to picture them having this conversation across a table from each other in Cobb’s kitchen. Or how Din pictured Cobb’s kitchen, anyway. Dwellings were pretty ubiquitous on Tatooine, all whitewashed walls and domed ceilings, perhaps a rug or two for warmth. Maybe Cobb would’ve prevailed upon him to shed his gloves and armor, and maybe Din would have let himself be convinced, lured by the comfort of a hearth fire and good company. He could see it with near-perfect clarity, the soft hazel of Cobb’s eyes, the way the warm lantern-light would illuminate his grey hair and paint the clever, handsome angles of his face golden. Cobb had a face you could never get tired of watching, animated and wry. Not like looking at the expressionless void of Din’s helmet. “We’re warriors, not animals.”

“Animals have names too,” Cobb pointed out with a glint of teeth. 

Din nearly laughed until Cobb’s expression sobered unexpectedly. He sniffed, lifted a metal cup to his lips and drank deeply. Spotchka, probably. It’d look the same on a holoprojector as it did in real life, blue and unnatural. Din waited him out.

A few seconds passed before Cobb, with uncharacteristic hesitation, added, “Slaves don’t. Or I didn’t, back when.”

A moment ago Din had regretted not being able to show emotion from behind the helmet. Just as quickly, he was grateful Cobb couldn’t see whatever it was his face did in response to that information. Pity was the last thing Cobb was after, Din was sure. “You were a slave,” he repeated uselessly.

Cobb lowered the cup and watched him. There was no telling what cues or signals he might be looking for. If Din was even capable of giving them. “I thought you knew.”

“Mandalorians aren’t psychic either. Or at least I’m not.”

At that, Cobb huffed a laugh. Din didn't share it. The thought of someone as good and proud and capable as Cobb, branded and in chains—

“Never said you were,” he said cheerfully, interrupting the dark turn of Din's thoughts. “And for the last time, I thought I told you to call me Cobb.” 

Their eyes met again, deliberately on Din’s part, and for Cobb, an acceptable guess as to where Din’s eyes were. Slowly he sat back, reclining like a lazy, well-fed Cathar, inviting Din’s gaze. Obediently Din did, and swallowed. 

As he watched, Cobb lifted his long-fingered hands and began undoing the buttons of his shirt, revealing skin that looked tanned even through the holo’s inadequate filter. His chest hair was sparse, darker than the stuff on his head, and his body was as lean and strong out of clothes as it was in them. Helplessly Din’s gaze snagged on the sight of Cobb’s rosy nipples and flat stomach before Cobb turned, shrugging his shirt down his arms so Din could see what he was trying to show him, other than this impromptu striptease: an old, poorly healed scar in the shape of a star. It was... large. Very large. Started high between Cobb's shoulder blades and continued down past the shirt. Slave brands were commonplace enough, but this was no brand. Someone had carved that into Cobb's flesh as an act of sheer malice. To cause as much pain and damage possible.

Din tightened his fists until his hands ached. Under his gloves, his knuckles would be as white as the rage that threatened to blank out his vision. 

Cobb let Din look his fill before he righted the shirt and faced the camera again, though he didn’t button himself back up. His expression was neutral, bordering on vacant.

“I’m sorry,” Din said tightly. He must sound murderous. “But no, I didn’t know.”

In retrospect, it made a horrible kind of sense. Tatooine's slave trade was still a booming business, would've been in its heyday when Cobb was young. There were other clues too: the way Cobb always put others first and himself last; the way he seemed as powerless to resist someone in need of help as Din, especially if they were less fortunate. His unwavering duty to the people of Mos Pelgo and relentless need to survive. There was a reason Din would have trusted him to care for Grogu had he become the krayt dragon’s next meal.

Cobb blew out a harsh breath. “Don’t make that face.”

“I’m not making a face.”

“Yeah, you are. I can practically hear it through the helmet.” Cobb gave an impatient wave of his hand and grimaced in—resignation, regret, it wasn’t clear. Din tracked the abruptly brittle way he rubbed his fingers over his mouth and looked off to the side, focusing on something outside the frame. 

How many of these holocalls had there been in the last several months? Dozens, surely. But never before had Din resented the distance between them so fiercely, all the galaxies and planets and stars that stood between him being able to pull Cobb’s hand away, to pull that droll gaze back to him with a finger beneath his chin. An endless universe that suddenly served no purpose beyond putting millions of miles between him and someone he might’ve—

Someone he might’ve chosen. For himself, for once. Had things been different. But that was not the way. 

Didn’t mean he always had to like it. 

When Cobb looked back at him, something in his eyes made Din’s heart trip faster. “I suppose I assumed it was obvious,” he said lowly, voice gone suspiciously thick. 

He leaned forward in a way that invited intimacy; Din mirrored him before he was quite aware he was doing it. Even through the poor facsimile of a holoprojector, Cobb generated a gravity that was all his own, magnetic and seductive and inevitable, heedless of distance. Din didn’t begrudge Cobb this hold over him. What had parenthood taught him, if not how to open himself to possibility, to learn to enjoy vibrating at the same rarefied frequency of others? Like Grogu, it was hard to think back to a time Cobb hadn’t been in his life, even if the sum total of their interactions were a few days together on Tatooine and a sad handful of holocalls.

“Nothing about you is obvious, Cobb.” Din winced at the bad lie. Cobb was many things, among them about as subtle as a dewback in heat. Of course Cobb would call him on it, and sure enough—

“Bullshit.” Slowly Cobb sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and looked up at Din from under his eyelashes, coy in a way that made Din itch to touch him. “We’ve been chatting this way for what, months now? Not that tact was ever my strong suit, but I’ve become pretty terrible at hiding things where you’re concerned, Mando.”

Din went very still. “Things like what?”

“I think you know.”

It was difficult to shift awkwardly in full beskar’gam. Tended to make the discomfort eighty times as obvious, or so it seemed to Din. Being the sole focus of Cobb’s considerable attention hardly helped matters—especially when the conversation veered into such dangerous territory. They spoke endlessly of Grogu, of the quest, of Din’s many adventures and brushes with death since leaving Mos Pelgo. And yet somehow they always seemed to skirt around why they’d established this habit in the first place. Why these calls not just happened, but continued to happen.

Why Din, always so comfortable in his solitary nature, found himself thinking of the marshal of Mos Pelgo so often after they parted ways. 

He was silent so long that he had to clear his throat before he spoke again. “I’m not always... great at reading people,” he said haltingly. “Not when their intentions are…”

“Impure?”

The playful flash of Cobb’s grin and a waggle of eyebrows surprised another snort out of Din, and the sound transformed itself into a chuckle before he could control himself. “Cobb. I could tell those were your intentions from the moment we met. You looked at me the way a krayt dragon looks at a bantha.” 

That earned a laugh, rich and deep and warm enough to send heat tingling through every part of Din. Like sinking into a hot bath. The pleasure was as pure and clear as seeing Grogu’s ears lift at the sound of his name. But this conversation was no place to be thinking of the child, was it? Not when Cobb went and looked at Din exactly the way Din had just described. As though Cobb wanted to devour him whole. 

“Well now,” Cobb said. Drawled, really. Din could picture him hooking his thumbs into his belt loops, hitching his pants even more scandalously low on his razor-slim hips. “I’ve actually got it on good authority from the Sand People that krayts can’t see worth shit. They’re full of useful tidbits, those Tuskens.”

Din tilted his head. He hoped Cobb could hear the smile in his voice. “Not the point I’m trying to make, and you know it.”

Cobb lifted his drink and sipped it neutrally. Gazed at Din steadily over the rim of his cup. “Then what’s your point, Mando?”

“It’s—I’m not.” Din struggled to pull the right words out of the air. “Everyone in the galaxy is trying to kill me and my kid. I’m not used to it when people’s intentions are... good.”

“You mean when people are interested in you.”

A beat. Din was positive he must be blushing to the roots of his hair. He tightened his fingers around the armrest of his chair and made himself say it. “That too.”

“Then if that’s the case, I guess I may as well come right out and ask you what you think the purpose of these calls has been. Other than the pleasure of my sparkling company and witty conversation, I mean.” Cobb met his gaze again, and this time Din was sure he knew exactly where he was looking. His eyes were sharp and bright as knives, capable of cutting through him just as quick. “Not that it’s ever a hardship to hear from you, but what exactly are we doin’ here?” 

He fell silent again. Cobb didn’t look away, didn’t let him off that easy, but when he smiled, it was kind. Too kind. His tone, when he spoke, was just as unbearably gentle. Not since childhood and losing his parents had Din wanted, so badly, to be held by another person. To let touch say what words couldn’t.

“I need you to say it, sweetheart, else I might come away with a different impression entirely.” Cobb paused, watched him again for whatever mysterious signals Din gave off that only Cobb seemed able to read. But he sounded less confident as he added, “Unless it’s the correct one, in which case maybe we better say goodnight.”

Beneath his helmet, Din closed his eyes. _Sweetheart_. He could’ve bled himself on the word and the particular way it resonated in Cobb’s low rasp of a voice, and gladly.

“My name is Din,” he said out of nowhere. From the sharp intake of Cobb’s breath, he certainly hadn’t been expecting that either. Din opened his eyes to see Cobb staring at him like he’d just been slapped with a fish. “Din Djarin. And—courting. We’ve been courting.”

“Din Djarin.” Cobb seemed to roll the name around on his tongue, drawing it out slow enough to make Din’s mouth go dry, and then he graced him with a smile that was impossibly affectionate and hotter than the desert at midday. “Well, Din, the fact that you just said ‘courting’ tells me this probably isn’t something you’ve got a lot of experience with. Am I right?”

“I’m Mandalorian, not celibate,” he snapped. Off Cobb’s raised eyebrows and amused expression, he bristled. He wasn’t. Not far off it, lately, but there’d been… people. At various points. “We just don’t—”

Despite Cobb’s obvious interest and the way his eyes signalled a clear _Go on_ , Din stopped. He thought of Bo-Katan, of Koska Reeves and Axe Woves, the way they’d traded glances and referred to Din’s covert as a cult of religious zealots. _Children of the Watch_. The more time went by, the less confident he felt that they were wrong. Maybe, had his life gone a different way, he could’ve been doing this with Cobb much sooner, without second-guessing every look and touch, every word that came out of his mouth. Questioning the Way for the first time in his adult life.

“Where I was raised, we were taught to never remove our helmets around another living creature. To never let anyone else remove it for us. I couldn’t— You would never be able to see my face.” _Boring_ , Xi’an once called it. She’d been the only one who stuck around long enough to let her opinions be known about the Way of the Mandalore, and obviously that hadn’t ended well. There’d been others, though no one else who warranted a repeat performance. So the fact that Din had never kissed another person or even really undressed more than was absolutely necessary was… immaterial. “This is the Way.” 

“Are you supposed to tell people your name too?” Cobb asked, sidestepping that entirely. Din frowned but didn’t interrupt. “When you’re courting. Or... ever.”

The question silenced anything Din might’ve said. That was damning in and of itself. Din was still searching for the right words to explain when Cobb shifted closer to the camera and quirked his lips, so impossibly knowing and gorgeous and _filthy_ that something seized in Din’s chest like he’d just been tasered. With a look like that, it was a miracle the comms panel didn’t start smoking and spitting out sparks.

“Din. Sweetheart.” 

It was the second time he’d called Din that. As before, the endearment hit its intended target. Din exhaled hard enough that it was probably audible at the other end of the call. By the heated glint in Cobb’s eye, it was. The look was enough to make Din’s cock start to fill in his pants and turn his insides molten. Then Cobb’s next words made Din nearly forget how to think, let alone breathe. 

“I want you,” Cobb said in that slight twang of his, voice low and sexy enough to make Din ache. “Have ever since the moment I saw you standin’ in that cantina and you threatened to strip my armor off me. You know that, right? I don’t need to see your face to know I find you attractive. To know that next we meet, I’m not letting you out of my bed for a week, helmet or no. Blindfold me if you gotta.”

Cobb’s voice hooked something behind Din’s balls and seemed to run through his whole body like a live wire. How he did that so easily was a mystery, almost as much as why he remotely thought of Din that way. Din, who could be so awkward and robotic in his armor, his mannerisms, speech, everything about him. Who spoke a list of languages as long as his arm but felt utterly alien to the dialect of touch. He was made for killing, not these slow, heartfelt seductions. But his dick didn’t seem to care or recognize the distinction. 

He groaned. “ _Cobb_.”

“Keep sayin’ my name like that, Mando, and I won’t be responsible for what I do next.” Never one to neglect a point, Cobb sat back in his chair, ghosted a hand down his chest. Played Din like a drum, the way he directed his attention to his nipples, then lower, to the lean ridges of his ribs and abdomen. Din couldn’t see lower than that on the holoprojector, but as Cobb’s hand disappeared from the frame, it wasn’t difficult to guess his target. There was a click and metallic burr of a button and zip being undone. Almost inaudibly, Cobb gave a low murmur of pleasure, and his Adam’s apple bobbed in a swallow. His voice was considerably huskier when he said, “Maybe that’s something you want.”

Din went from sort-of turned on to uncomfortably hard in seconds, fast enough to make him lightheaded. He realized, belatedly, he’d been holding his breath; no wonder he felt like someone had just blasted him out an airlock. 

“Kriff,” he muttered and tipped his helmet back against the headrest of his chair. He clenched his hands into fists but didn’t try to tear his eyes away. “When you look like that—” He breathed in slowly and let it out through his mouth. Mostly it came out sounding like a sigh. “I might.”

“Where’s the kid?” Cobb asked.

“Not here.” Realizing how irresponsible that must sound, Din added, “Corvus was... eventful. He’s gonna sleep like the dead for the next eighteen hours.” That much was true. Last he checked, Grogu hadn’t even stirred when Din placed a hand on his fuzzy head and tucked the blanket more securely around him in his hammock.

“Good. That’s good.” Cobb sounded pleased. With his eyes half-closed and his mouth soft, he was a wet dream come to life. He started to move his arm lazily up and down, and Din’s eyes tracked the movement like a loth-cat stalking prey. “Then if we’re not in any danger of ruining any childhoods, your creed got anything to say about jerking off over a holocall?”

Din swallowed. His mouth was drier than the deserts around Mos Pelgo. “Not that I can recall.”

“Fantastic. And does that thought get you as hard as it does me?”

Wordlessly Din nodded. The holocam probably cut most of his body off from view, but he shifted his hand slowly, telegraphing the movement as he reached down to rub the flat of his palm against his cock, feeling how it strained the fabric of his flight suit. He shuddered.

“Get your cock out for me, handsome,” said Cobb. “I can’t see it, but I wanna hear you. I want to watch you come.”

A quiet moan escaped Din’s throat. But he did as he was told, coaxed all too easily to that zone where he was helpless to obey, where following orders made something quiet in his mind and go still. Small wonder he took so easily to the Way of the Mandalore as a child. Why it felt so right as an adult. It was as second-nature as breathing for him. Righted something in a world where often nothing made sense and Din struggled to keep up.

His cock was hard and hot in his hand, drooling precome and foreskin pushed nearly all the way back. Din couldn’t remember ever being this turned-on, certainly never just from the sound of someone’s voice or the sight of their bared neck. He wanted—needed—to feel skin against skin; Cobb wore gloves, sometimes, but he wasn’t now. Shakily Din released his grip on himself to strip off his own, fumbling for a moment before he freed his hands and let the gloves fall carelessly to the ground. He gave a full-body shiver when he wrapped his bare fingers around his shaft again. Cobb noticed and swore under his breath.

“Suns above, you’re gorgeous.”

“You can’t see me,” Din answered, finding it somewhere within him to give a breathless laugh.

“I can see enough.” 

Biting his lip, Cobb began moving his arm faster, eyes fixed on Din’s helmet. Din matched his pace with a quiet moan. If he strained his ears enough, he could hear the soft slick sound of Cobb stroking himself, the murmurs of pleasure he made at the back of his throat. It was all too easy to imagine how Cobb would sound panting against his ear, the hot puffs of his breath as they worked each other to orgasm.

“Tell me what you feel like,” Cobb commanded like he was thinking about it too.

Din huffed. “I feel close,” he admitted but didn’t slow his pace. When was the last time he’d gotten off this fast? During his teenage years, surely. Maybe the first time he’d traded fumbling handjobs with another foundling, the first time he’d fucked someone or been fucked. It all seemed hazy and far-away. The sight and sound of Cobb seemed to fill all his senses, blotting out everything else. “Wishing it was your hand on me, letting you feel how hard I am for you. How much I want you.” He sounded like he was outside of himself but couldn’t shut the hell up.

Cobb just groaned his appreciation and reached up to pinch a nipple. Din flinched and cried out like it was Cobb’s hand on his chest. Cobb was breathing harshly, unevenly, and something about the way he shifted and arched in his seat hinted that Din wasn’t the only one on the verge of coming.

“If you were here,” Cobb started, then broke off with another curse and a gasp. He squeezed his eyes shut. Din resisted the urge to do the same; he wanted to see everything, see Cobb tip over the edge. “If you were here—gods, I’d fuck you so hard you’d never think about leaving, never think about anyone else again. Make you come on my cock and scream my name so loud that everyone from here to Kashyyyk would know you’re mine.”

“Fuck.” It was too much. “Cobb—”

Din tripped over the precipice. Always quiet by nature, his shout felt like it was pulled from somewhere else and yet deep within him at the same time, and he jerked and shuddered as he came over his hand, moaning shamelessly as he spurted onto the beskar of his chestplate and stomach armor. He kept stroking himself until one last glob of semen welled over his fist, and he groaned at the force of the full-body shiver that quaked through him with the aftershocks.

He barely got his eyes open in time to catch Cobb part his lips around a harsh cry, his own orgasm overtaking him beautifully. To watch him come apart, shaking with pleasure and a rough sob of Din’s name, face contorted in the agony of ecstasy, was the most breathtaking thing Din had ever seen. It made his cock give a painfully hopeful twitch, and Din moaned again, trying to bite back the sound for the sheer futility of it.

Several moments passed while they just stared at each other, panting hard and looking poleaxed. Beneath his helmet and armor, Din was dripping sweat. His moustache was matted with it and he could feel the way his hair was stuck haphazardly to his forehead from thrashing about. His body had the approximate integrity of a wrung-out dishrag. 

“Dank farrik,” Cobb forced out after what seemed like hours. Even through the grainy picture of the holo, Din could see he was sweating too, eyes half-lidded and drooping like Cobb was about to pass out. Din had just come his brains out and still, somehow, had the wherewithal to appreciate the sight of Cobb’s damp, heaving chest. “That was damn near a religious experience.”

Din opened his mouth to answer but found nothing came out at first. He blew out a breath, hard, noting he really _was_ lightheaded now, and tried again. “It was—it was something.”

“Is Mando sex always that intense?”

Mother of Moons, this _man_. Din’s chest was full up with stupid, dumbfounded affection even as he blushed furiously and flipped him the bird. “Fuck off.”

“Because if it is—” Cobb broke off with an incredulous giggle that made Din grin in response, so far gone he couldn’t even think about fighting the wave of tenderness that rolled through him. Heaving an exhausted groan, the kind borne of well-earned soreness, Cobb shifted halfway onto his side so that he was draped languidly over his chair, looking as fucked-out and sated as an emperor as he gazed at Din with a hand propped beneath his cheek. The way, Din realized with a jolt, they might gaze at one another from across a shared pillow. “If it is, I reckon I might need to ask for that armor back.”

“Good luck fighting Boba Fett for it,” Din deadpanned as though the thought of Cobb in his bed, of them, close enough to share heat and breath, didn’t make his whole body sing with longing. Unconsciously he adjusted his position to mirror Cobb’s, the two of them curled together like parentheses. “He actually might shoot you in the balls if you tell him you want it for weird sex reasons. I don’t care how much I like you, I want no part of that discussion.”

Cobb just smiled, eyes a-twinkle. Creases appeared at the corners of his eyes, whole face going tender and warm in a manner very at odds with the lightness of their exchange. 

“Stars, you’re beautiful,” he murmured out of nowhere. Din nearly choked on air. “You got no clue how badly I wish I could kiss you right now.”

A bit sadly, Din smiled. Tried to cover it up with humour even if Cobb couldn’t see. “That’s the orgasm talking. I could look like a womp rat under here.”

“Nah.” Cobb didn’t shift his focus away from Din’s helmet, didn’t even blink. “No way you’d get my dick that hard unless you’re secretly prettier than a twi’lek. I got a sixth sense for these things. ”

Covering his visor with his hand, Din muffled a horrified laugh and muttered, “I’m starting to regret this entire conversation.”

There was a pause. Then: “Do you?”

Din lowered his hand. The way he could flip from glib to serious was enough to give a man whiplash, but even a snake-hipped smooth-talker like Cobb must experience doubt sometime. Fortunately it was about the easiest question—and answer—Din had heard all evening. 

“No.” Yet he hesitated. “This was— It’s _not_ usually like this.”

“Then I’m not the only one feelin’ it.” 

Wordlessly Din shook his head. “The stuff you said. I… want those things too.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

Cobb grinned, cocksure and lascivious once again, but the false confidence subsided when Din didn’t play it off like this was just so much witty banter, the kind it seemed they’d perfected within minutes of meeting. 

“I don’t know that I’ll be able to return to Tatooine anytime soon,” he said gently. Regret clouded his words, and for once he didn’t worry it might not translate through the modulator. He could hear it in every syllable, see it reflected on Cobb’s face. “Things are—It feels as if this quest has been building towards something. I don’t know what, but. If there’s somewhere all of this is leading, I think we’re close.”

“Close to what?”

“I wish I knew.”

After a moment to let that sink in, Cobb shook his head and sighed in resignation. He squared his jaw, and when he looked back up at Din, his resolve was plain. “Don’t you worry about me,” Cobb said firmly. "Your mission comes first. Your _kid_ comes first. I wouldn’t presume to suggest otherwise. Just wish I could be there to watch your six again.” 

“Me too.” Empty words. Sincere, but empty. A charmer like Cobb might always have a pretty line at the ready, but Din wasn’t fooled. They were both hard-edged realists. That made things both easier, and not. But Din’s kid could move objects with his mind. Maybe there was something to be said about the power of a wish. “You’d have made a good Mandalorian, in another life.”

“Well, well. If that ain’t high praise, I don’t know what is.” 

For a moment they just smiled at each other, Cobb broadly, if a bit forced, and Din in secret, basking in the glow of bittersweet joy until Cobb’s expression softened. He reached out to lay a hand alongside the camera lens. Right, Din knew, where his cheek might’ve been had they been together, heads close and hands touching across that phantom table in Cobb’s imaginary kitchen, or in a bed they might never share. He would’ve leaned into the warmth of Cobb’s palm like he could feel it through his beskar. Would’ve longed for that barrier to disappear between them so he could savour Cobb’s touch against his skin. 

This was a dangerous line he was skirting. But the thought didn’t fill him with as much wariness as it would have, once.

Longingly, like he could read every one of Din’s thoughts through the tilt of his head and the hunch of his shoulders, Cobb sighed. His voice was terribly rough as he said, “Even if you can’t come back just yet, just… think about me sometimes, alright?”

Din’s throat was tight. “I think about you all the time.”

The corner of Cobb’s mouth lifted. “Then that’s enough. It can be enough until fate puts you and your son in my path again.”

It would have to be. Fate had no place in a Mandalorian’s creed; all Din’s life, he’d been taught that from destruction came growth. New life. That meant never stopping, never slowing, never waiting around for things to happen to you. To wait was to stagnate and die. Looking at Cobb’s face, his warm eyes and trusting smile, Din wasn’t sure anymore if that was true; the thought of slowing down with someone like Cobb, _waiting_ for him, had its appeal. Just because a tree spent its whole existence in one spot didn’t mean it stopped growing.

But whether or not they agreed on the concept of fate, Cobb had one thing right: it wasn’t finished with Din yet.

“I have to see this through,” he said as much to Cobb as himself. To Grogu, asleep, trusting and peaceful belowdecks. Din took a measure of strength from Cobb’s small smile, his solemn nod. “But I promise I’ll try to come back to you.” Din’s voice cracked as he said, “A Mandalorian’s promise is his bond. This is the Way.”

Cobb wasn’t Mandalorian. And yet somehow, in a place inside him Din sensed was right, he believed him when Cobb met his gaze and echoed, “This is the Way.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come join me [on Tumblr](http://nanoochka.tumblr.com)!


End file.
